Sorry, i don't normally do this, you know.
I saw The Dark Knight recently, which i know does not seem like my type of movie, but i have a soft spot for Batman, and Batman Begins was my second favorite Batman movie after the 1989 one, although i never saw Batman and Robin, which i've heard is the best of them because of the blue glass schlongmobile that Batman low-rides around town in. Anyway, though no one gives an f about what i think about this movie, you are below subjected to it, sorry. Though i have linked it so that those who like to be "SURPRISED!" by a cultural product, but not surprised enough to see it opening night(!) don't have to find out all hell of shit about the sound quality (i'll leave that for you to be astonished in the theater):
All i heard previous to our viewing the movie was some gushing over Heath and a person who i really don't know that well telling me "I think you'd like it" based apparently on my ability to show up to a party she was at in a timely manner? Suffice it to say, while i felt that Batman Begins (which, to make it clear, is my second favorite Batman movie, and i think probably a better movie than the 1989 one, but the 1989 one reminds me more of my concept of Batman previous to any of the movies, so i have a soft spot for it) developed Bruce Wayne/Batman over the course of the movie and the action scenes did not distract from it [even sometimes helped it, during his training with Rahs al Gul (sp?)], i felt that the Dark Knight was really a series of escalating stunts substituting for a lack of coherent character development. Really it seemed like they were trying to develop an ambiguous entity of Right that was supposed to be represented by a composite of Batman, Lieutenant/Commissioner Gordon, Harvey "Two-Face" Dent, and the Joker. While the development of Harvey Dent really seems like the most central narrative, simultaneously it felt like everything was directed/edited to downplay that and upplay the Joker, despite the fact that the dichotomy of absolute good and absolute evil is most simplistically reduced to Two-Face. The Joker is meant to serve as the opposite of Batman, Batman therefore meant to be a higher order than the "rules" that the Joker decries, a moral order that the law cannot embody, but can apparently be embodied by a single human (Batman thinks it's Harvey Dent, but the movie makes it clear that it is actually Batman). This is a question that Lucius raises to Batman -"What gives you the right?"- to which the response is no response -"Just this once." That scene really speaks to me of the incoherence of the whole movie: Batman, as the opposite of the Joker, is meant to be this entity of Right and yet admits that what he does is immoral. His rule about not killing is a statement that the ends (cleaning up crime) do not justify the means (killing) and then we are supposed to accept that, well, sometimes they do (the ends -finding the Joker- justifies the means -total surveillance). This extends all the way to the end, where Batman says something along the lines of "Batman is whatever we need." What? Didn't he just beat up some dudes with guns and hockey equipment that were using Batman for "whatever we need (i.e., stopping crime)"? It felt like the movie couldn't decide whether it was in favor of moral ambiguity (embodied most obviously by the "chance" of Two-Face, where randomness rules) or opposed (embodied by the "confession" and consequent expiation of sin of Commissioner Gordon).
A British critic claims that "Ledger becomes, in a curiously twisted way, the moral centre of the film, and this makes The Dark Knight an unintentionally sick spectacle, pretending to justify law and justice, but in reality celebrating violence and chaos." While i disagree with this because i think the movie HAS no moral center (i also disagree with his absurd praise for Ledger -a posthumous Oscar nomination? Com'n!), how can we completely disagree with the Joker when he says to Harvey that "you tell them you're going to shoot a gangbanger or blow up a truck full of soldiers and no one cares because they expect it"? The double-standard of human life that he is suggesting at the very least is one that should be addressed by the Batman and yet never is. When at the end the Joker rigs a boat full of convicts and a boat full of The New Yorker set to blow the other one up with a push of a button and neither of them do, Batman states basically "People are good," but the people on one boat are precisely the people who are shooting gangbangers and blowing-up soldiers (or police). He thus equates the value of lives that he does not defend equally (i have never seen him break-up a drug deal before it goes south, and if he does they are all white people and it is such as coke or something. Are there any black people in Gotham that aren't in prison? I just realized that outside of Billy Dee Willliams in the 1989 Batman film i've never seen any). This also, as the movie as a whole does, completely ignores the systemic roots of violence, the systemic roots of terrorism (something that Batman Begins did, too, unfortunately). Are we instead supposed to sympathize with Batman who seems to accept Alfred's advice -based on his colonial experience in Burma, for chrissakes- that unfortunately you have to burn a forest down to catch a single bandit?
Also that British critic says that it is the most poorly sound-balanced film he's seen in a while and found it impossible to decipher much of the dialog, which is totally true. Maybe that's why he totally misses that the Joker's gang is entirely made up of the mentally-unbalanced, mostly from Arkham Asylum, and thus claims that it is unrealistic that he could find recruits. I do not know that many criminally-insane folks, but i therefore do not think that i am qualified to judge what they think is a good idea.
EDIT (4:10 pm PDT): My friend pointed out to me that in fact there are at least two other free black characters, both in Begins and TDK: the above-mentioned Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and the Commissioner who precedes Gordon (Colin McFarland).
All i heard previous to our viewing the movie was some gushing over Heath and a person who i really don't know that well telling me "I think you'd like it" based apparently on my ability to show up to a party she was at in a timely manner? Suffice it to say, while i felt that Batman Begins (which, to make it clear, is my second favorite Batman movie, and i think probably a better movie than the 1989 one, but the 1989 one reminds me more of my concept of Batman previous to any of the movies, so i have a soft spot for it) developed Bruce Wayne/Batman over the course of the movie and the action scenes did not distract from it [even sometimes helped it, during his training with Rahs al Gul (sp?)], i felt that the Dark Knight was really a series of escalating stunts substituting for a lack of coherent character development. Really it seemed like they were trying to develop an ambiguous entity of Right that was supposed to be represented by a composite of Batman, Lieutenant/Commissioner Gordon, Harvey "Two-Face" Dent, and the Joker. While the development of Harvey Dent really seems like the most central narrative, simultaneously it felt like everything was directed/edited to downplay that and upplay the Joker, despite the fact that the dichotomy of absolute good and absolute evil is most simplistically reduced to Two-Face. The Joker is meant to serve as the opposite of Batman, Batman therefore meant to be a higher order than the "rules" that the Joker decries, a moral order that the law cannot embody, but can apparently be embodied by a single human (Batman thinks it's Harvey Dent, but the movie makes it clear that it is actually Batman). This is a question that Lucius raises to Batman -"What gives you the right?"- to which the response is no response -"Just this once." That scene really speaks to me of the incoherence of the whole movie: Batman, as the opposite of the Joker, is meant to be this entity of Right and yet admits that what he does is immoral. His rule about not killing is a statement that the ends (cleaning up crime) do not justify the means (killing) and then we are supposed to accept that, well, sometimes they do (the ends -finding the Joker- justifies the means -total surveillance). This extends all the way to the end, where Batman says something along the lines of "Batman is whatever we need." What? Didn't he just beat up some dudes with guns and hockey equipment that were using Batman for "whatever we need (i.e., stopping crime)"? It felt like the movie couldn't decide whether it was in favor of moral ambiguity (embodied most obviously by the "chance" of Two-Face, where randomness rules) or opposed (embodied by the "confession" and consequent expiation of sin of Commissioner Gordon).
A British critic claims that "Ledger becomes, in a curiously twisted way, the moral centre of the film, and this makes The Dark Knight an unintentionally sick spectacle, pretending to justify law and justice, but in reality celebrating violence and chaos." While i disagree with this because i think the movie HAS no moral center (i also disagree with his absurd praise for Ledger -a posthumous Oscar nomination? Com'n!), how can we completely disagree with the Joker when he says to Harvey that "you tell them you're going to shoot a gangbanger or blow up a truck full of soldiers and no one cares because they expect it"? The double-standard of human life that he is suggesting at the very least is one that should be addressed by the Batman and yet never is. When at the end the Joker rigs a boat full of convicts and a boat full of The New Yorker set to blow the other one up with a push of a button and neither of them do, Batman states basically "People are good," but the people on one boat are precisely the people who are shooting gangbangers and blowing-up soldiers (or police). He thus equates the value of lives that he does not defend equally (i have never seen him break-up a drug deal before it goes south, and if he does they are all white people and it is such as coke or something. Are there any black people in Gotham that aren't in prison? I just realized that outside of Billy Dee Willliams in the 1989 Batman film i've never seen any). This also, as the movie as a whole does, completely ignores the systemic roots of violence, the systemic roots of terrorism (something that Batman Begins did, too, unfortunately). Are we instead supposed to sympathize with Batman who seems to accept Alfred's advice -based on his colonial experience in Burma, for chrissakes- that unfortunately you have to burn a forest down to catch a single bandit?
Also that British critic says that it is the most poorly sound-balanced film he's seen in a while and found it impossible to decipher much of the dialog, which is totally true. Maybe that's why he totally misses that the Joker's gang is entirely made up of the mentally-unbalanced, mostly from Arkham Asylum, and thus claims that it is unrealistic that he could find recruits. I do not know that many criminally-insane folks, but i therefore do not think that i am qualified to judge what they think is a good idea.
EDIT (4:10 pm PDT): My friend pointed out to me that in fact there are at least two other free black characters, both in Begins and TDK: the above-mentioned Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and the Commissioner who precedes Gordon (Colin McFarland).